Into the Columbia Blue | Undergraduate Admissions Video | Columbia University

When I first stepped on campus it was completely different than anything I had ever thought of. It just felt like a historic place a special place. Being surrounded by everyone who really inspires you I think it kind of pushed me to do more. Seeing the accomplishments that my peers are able to make it's a really cool feeling to be part of such an ambitious community. I fell in love with being in New York City I fell in love with the diversity here and the people that I met every semester like three of our five professors are just like world-famous which is like ridiculous right but that's true across like all departments and programs here at Columbia. Debating books, debating pieces of art debating meaning behind that, I stepped back from my own perspective and I started looking at the world around me in a broader context. I've really seen people grow in ways that I never could have imagined I feel like I've grown so much myself. You realize that you're part of a university that has had so many incredible people come before you and all of a sudden you're part of that as well. Coming to Columbia was the first time that I had a chance to experience different things and one of the things I really enjoyed was changing seasons. I think fall is a really exciting time at Columbia it's a time of excitement it's a time of change. It's all these new students are coming in and they're getting adjusted to Columbia. At Columbia I met students from all over the world from all continents from Australia to my neighbors from Bulgaria. I'm from Shanghai China. Cape Coral Florida. Originally from Nigeria. Holden Maine. And everyone had such different experiences and such different stories I don't know how to explain but like the international students we all have like something in common like the fact that we are international brought you together exactly knowing that you go to a university with not just like-minded individuals but open-minded individuals it was something that I wanted to be part of. Learning from somebody who has a different background from you is a very very eye-opening experience. Engineering is all about seeing things from different perspectives and being able to understand multiple perspectives to solve one common project is gonna be something I use for the rest of my life. You just have so many different people that believe so many different things and exhibit those things in different ways that you're almost forced to at least engage with the ideas that people have and the value that that brings to just like your conversations your projects like everything you do it's really remarkable. Winter is the best season for New York City and the best season for Columbia. You get to experience New York in the holidays which is maybe the most magical thing a human being can do. The core curriculum is the backbone of the Columbia experience. Studying in the School of Engineering and Applied Science you take basically a third of the core. For me something really important was being able to not just go into engineering, just going to mathematics I always wanted more. You end up taking classes that maybe you wouldn't have picked otherwise. I assumed I wasn't interested in science - learned a lot about neuroscience learned about psychology learned about ecology. We spend multiple years in these small seminar classes surrounded by 18 to 20 other students who come from totally different backgrounds than you and you have very difficult conversations with those people but in a very respectful manner. You read the same set of books you go through the same set of discussions you ask the same big questions and it was just cool for everybody to be coming at the texts from different experiences but kind of all talking about the same thing. And that's one of the ways that you make really good friends here at Columbia is through those conversations and it's not necessarily people who you always agree with. The core I would say is both an academic and a personal growth curriculum. It shifts from just being a descriptive conversation about what you read or what you see and it turns into why did you read what you read, why do you look at a painting and see what you see, why is my perspective different from the person's across from me. I think what the Core has given me is really fundamentally a perspective shift and what it's led me to is a focus on creating new and real solutions to problems that I see in my own world. Tree-lighting is a great example of a community tradition that we have. There are performances by acapella groups free chocolate free donuts what Lorenzo my friend always says as we're walking down college walk he said I will never get tired of this walk. so it's a really cool way to celebrate the transition into the winter last year we had a crazy snowstorm everyone was enjoying themselves so much a lot of people hadn't seen snow before they've come here. There's a sense of unity and it's a really fun thing to share with your friends and just like brings the entire community together in a really in a really cool way I love spring because it's getting warmer out so there are more people coming out on campus. Once the snow melts you'll see everyone on low steps just sitting there and basking in the sun The cool thing about Columbia's campus is you're kind of in your own little world within the city of New York. You walk in through any of the sets of gates that line our campus and it's just silent. I see my friends walking through campus no matter what day it is. You see students lying on the grass you see people playing frisbee. We have restaurants that we go to our favorite coffee shops in Morningside Heights. They become your hangout spots your study spots. And that's a really remarkable thing and something that really fosters like the college experience that you get here at Columbia. My favorite part of campus is definitely the Amsterdam bridge. Lerner Hall. Butler Library. Low Steps. Low Steps. Low Steps. Favorite spot on campus is definitely Low Steps. But the Columbia experience is not only a classroom experience. That's probably another kind of big point about Columbia students - regardless of what their particular interest is they all care about like things outside of these gates. There's a Whitney Biennial going on I think it's like America's leading young artists right now and one exhibition.. New York City offers everything no matter what you're studying no matter what you're interested at the moment you can kind of go out and explore those different passions. And the cool thing about going to Columbia is that we can get a lot of these things either free or severely discounted price. And because we're in the city we can really intern in parallel with classes. I was always interested in politics. My first week of school actually I started out working for someone who was getting elected to City Council. I don't think that's an opportunity I would have gotten anywhere else. This summer I had an internship at the American Museum of Natural History where I was doing biology research; I was able to live on campus and commute to the museum. Engineers at Columbia go on to work for law firms, for marketing companies, nonprofit organizations. New York as a city has pretty much every industry you could possibly think of and seeing that diversity of application of engineering was very eye-opening to me as a freshman engineering student. If you are passionate about something, Columbia gives you the platform and all the resources that allow you to pursue it. 'next a broader set of arguments relate to secular stagnation. I am not persuaded by those theories' For me it happened to be research with Nobel laureate professor Joseph Stiglitz. For others it might be another goal but I believe that Columbia has met has even exceeded my expectations. Buildings and the campus and the programs and all this make it nice but by far the best thing about Columbia is the people. The people. The people. The people are amazing in so many different ways. I think that people come here for each other. To be connected to the people who are going to lead all these different industries that's definitely something that's very unique to Columbia and the opportunities that this education and this degree afford to you. The people who come here are going to go do great things like there's no doubt about that but it's really more about pushing the world in the right direction that really guides what we do. At Columbia engineering there is this fundamental emphasis that what you build isn't good for its own sake but rather good for the society that it's meant to impact. Columbia is a place that's like ever-growing ever-changing and at the end of the day we're true to our values. It's the challenge and the motivation that I'm not going to accept my world the way I see it I'm going to leave my own mark on it I'm going to create my own solutions to the issues that I see that has been really really formative for my time at Columbia.

Channel: Columbia Undergraduate Admissions

Views: 301,673

Keywords: Columbia, Columbia College, Columbia Engineering, Columbia University, New York City, NYC, Ivy League, college admissions, undergraduate education, college, university, Core Curriculum, Columbia admissions, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, admissions video

Id: R-O6z1PaChE

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 22 2018